A lot of creators record their content in OBS first and go live with it later or use it as VOD content. Whether you’re building a tutorial, recording gameplay, teaching an online class, or saving a stream to rebroadcast, you need a reliable way to capture everything happening on your screen.
Built-in screen recorders rarely give you the quality, flexibility, or audio control a professional video needs. That’s why so many creators end up in OBS Studio. OBS handles the job well, but only after you change a few default settings.
This guide walks through the whole setup for OBS screen recording:
- Adding a capture source.
- Choosing the right recording format and encoder settings.
- Splitting your audio into separate tracks.
- Turning your final MP4 recording into a live stream.
Let’s go through the process step by step to start recording your screen in OBS.
Step-1: Add a Display Capture Source to Your Scene
OBS Studio is the standard free way to screen records on a PC. Every recording starts with one decision: which capture source goes into your scene.
Click the + button in the Sources panel and pick the type that matches what you’re recording; the sections that follow handle everything from output settings to the finished file.
OBS is open-source software released under the GPLv2 license, so it’s completely free with no paid tier hiding the recorder. Downloads from obsproject.com are the official, safe builds.
Capture is also passive: websites and applications can’t detect that Display Capture is running.
To record your screen and camera together, add a Video Capture Device source above your capture source, then drag the webcam frame to a corner of the canvas and resize it.
Display Capture
Display Capture records an entire monitor, which makes it the answer for full-screen recording: add the source, select the monitor from the dropdown, and everything on that display lands in the file. On a single-monitor setup, minimize OBS after you start recording, or you’ll capture the app watching itself in an infinite mirror effect.
On macOS, OBS asks for the Screen Recording permission under Privacy & Security on first launch; grant it before the source will show anything.
Window Capture
Window Capture records one application window and nothing else. Notifications, your desktop, and every other app stay out of the frame, which makes it the private option and the cleanest fix for single-monitor recording.
Game Capture
Game Capture hooks a game’s rendering pipeline directly on Windows, so it’s the cleanest way to record gameplay in OBS. Set its mode to “Capture specific window,” pick the game, and run the same output settings as the rest of this guide; fullscreen titles that Display Capture shows as black usually work here.
Step-2: Set the Recording Format to MKV in Output Settings
MKV is the best recording format in OBS because a crash can’t kill the file; an MP4 recording corrupts entirely without a graceful stop. The container format takes seconds to change:
- Open Settings → Output.
- Set the Recording Path to a drive with plenty of free space.
- Set the Recording Format to MKV.
- Pick a Recording Quality in Simple output mode; anything above “Same as stream” pulls extra system resources.
OBS has no recording length limit, free or otherwise. It records until your disk fills, which is exactly why crash resilience matters: a three-hour session shouldn’t ride on a container that dies with one power flicker.
You won’t be stuck with MKV either. The last section of the workflow remuxes it to MP4 for editors and upload forms.
Step-3: Tune the Encoder With CQP 16–23 Rate Control
Good OBS recording settings come down to three values from the official Advanced Recording Settings Guide:
- Quality-based rate control set between 16 and 23
- A keyframe interval of 2
- A hardware encoder whenever you have one.
Switch Output Mode to Advanced under Settings → Output to reach them.
Recording doesn’t chase a bitrate target the way streaming does. Rate control modes like CQP hold a constant quality level and spend whatever data each frame needs, so hunting for a “1080p 60fps bitrate” number is solving the wrong problem; set the CQ level instead and let file size float.
For 1080p recording, keep the base (canvas) resolution at your monitor’s native size, match the output (scaled) resolution to it, and run 60 FPS for motion-heavy content.
The same logic settles the 2K-versus-1080p question: record at whatever your display natively runs, and downscale later in delivery if a platform demands it.
Blurry footage almost always traces back to a CQ level set too high or an output resolution scaled below the canvas. Pixelation and compression artifacts are the encoder starving frames of data, and dropping the CQ value a few points feeds them again.
The baselines below match the Simple-mode presets for each encoder family. Lower CQ values mean higher quality and larger files across all four.
NVIDIA NVENC
NVENC runs Rate Control at Constant QP with a CQ level of 16–23, Preset P5, and Tuning set to High Quality. Set Multipass Mode to Two Passes (Quarter Resolution), Profile to High, Look-ahead off, Adaptive Quantization on, and B-frames to 2.
x264
x264 is the software encoder that runs on your CPU, the fallback when no hardware encoder exists. Use Rate Control CRF at 16–23, keyframe interval 2, the veryfast CPU usage preset, Profile High, and no Tune.
AMD
AMD cards take Rate Control CQP with a CQ level of 16–23 and the Quality preset. Keep the keyframe interval at 2, Profile at High, and Max B-frames at 0.
Intel QuickSync
QuickSync uses ICQ rate control with an ICQ Quality of 16–23 and Target Usage TU4. Set Profile High, keyframe interval 2, Latency normal, and B-frames to 3.
Step-4: Split Mic and Desktop Audio Into Separate Tracks
To screen record on OBS with audio you can actually edit, route each source to its own audio track-
- Click the gear icon at the bottom left of the Audio Mixer and open Advanced Audio Properties.
- Assign every source to Track 1, then give each its own track from 2–6: Mic/Aux on Track 2, Desktop Audio on Track 3, and so on.
- Enable those same tracks under Settings → Output so OBS writes them into the recording.
That split lets you duck game audio under commentary, strip copyrighted music from a recording, or rebalance a quiet mic without touching the rest of the mix.
One caution: standard video players play back a single audio track. Keep every source on Track 1 unless the file goes through an editor before publishing, or your audience hears only one slice of the mix.
Step-5: Record, Pause, and Remux the File to MP4
Click Start Recording in the Controls panel, and the rest of the session runs on three moves: pause, stop, and remux.
- Start Recording, then assign a hotkey under Settings → Hotkeys so you can trigger it with OBS minimized.
- Pause from the button beside the stop control whenever you switch tasks; paused segments never touch the file.
- Stop Recording, then find the file through File → Show Recordings.
- Remux with File → Remux Recordings to convert the MKV to MP4 in seconds. Remuxing swaps the container without re-encoding, so quality stays untouched; tick “Automatically remux to mp4” under Settings → Advanced to make it happen on every stop.
- For short clips instead of full sessions, enable the Replay Buffer, which saves the last few minutes on a hotkey.
OBS freezing or shutting down mid-recording usually signals encoder overload: the encoder can’t keep pace with the canvas, so OBS skips frames or the whole app goes down. Drop to a faster preset, raise the CQ level a notch, or close GPU-heavy apps, and note that an MKV session stays playable after a crash instead of corrupting.
That remuxed MP4 is also exactly what simulated-live platforms ingest; Castr’s Pre-Recorded Streams, for example, accepts MP4 uploads only.
Broadcast the Finished Recording as a Live Stream
Your recording doesn’t have to sit as an on-demand upload only. Pre-recorded live streaming, also called simulated live or VOD2Live, plays the file out as a real broadcast that viewers watch live.
Recording first buys you everything a live session can’t. You get retakes, tight edits, and zero risk of an on-air failure, then keep the urgency and chat of a live premiere when the file airs. Solo creators especially benefit, since nobody has to present and monitor an encoder at the same time.
Castr builds this in as Pre-Recorded Streams, available from the Starter plan up:
- Open Pre-Recorded Streams in the Castr dashboard and create a new stream.
- Upload your MP4, the one format the uploader accepts, which is why the remux step above matters.
- Choose Loop for a continuous replay or Date & Time to premiere once at a scheduled moment.
- Add destinations, from your website player to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch, and Castr handles the RTMP ingest and multistreaming from the cloud.
Your computer doesn’t even need to be on when the stream airs.
Wrapping Up
A recording built on MKV, quality-based rate control, and split audio tracks gives you a file that survives crashes and cuts cleanly in the edit. Castr turns that same file into a scheduled or looping live broadcast across your website player and every social destination you multistream to.
Start a free trial on Castr and schedule your first pre-recorded stream today.
